Abstract Oil Painting, "Mirages du Desert" by Lebanese Artist Nada Eido

Large abstract oil painting on canvas. "Mirages du Desert,"
 
by Artist Nada Eido delves into an imaginary desert.
 
With its broad bands of color, repetitive squares, the work of Lebanese painter Nada Eido, commands attention through its textures more so than its content.
 
"Mirages du Desert," are the kind of works that make you want to scan their surface like fingertips on Braille.
 
The theme Eido is seeking to complete here is, generally speaking, the desert, along with the illusions and hallucinations the desert gives rise to in the form of mirages.
 
"I always paint abstract," she says. "This time I wanted to paint landscapes so I decided to take the theme of the desert because it's a landscape and abstract at the same time."
 
Just as deserts create the conditions for those traversing them to experience mirages, Eido considers her paintings as catalysts for the imagination. "When you have visions, when you imagine things that are not real, you can imagine many things," she says. "You can help people to see things."
 
Breaking things down to the simplest of terms, she says that if someone looks at her paintings and doesn't get the abstractions or doesn't like abstract art to begin with, telling that person that they are looking at a picture of a desert helps.
 
"If they say, 'I'm seeing only a square,' when you put a theme, you lead them and their imagination so they understand the painting more and they like it more." The purpose of art, in her view, is that "it's nice to see. It's good for the imagination, the brain."
 
 
Eido earned a degree in studio art from the Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA) in 1991 and has been painting more or less full time ever since. She taught at ALBA for a year and a half and has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the Sursock Museum's Salon d'Automne in 1994.
 
Dimensions: 55" x 47".